


Lonely Thoughts

by afteriwake



Series: tomorrow you'll still be beautiful [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Asexual Mycroft Holmes, Dead Irene Adler, F/M, Fake Character Death, Mycroft Feels, Mycroft doesn't know, Mycroft is a Bit Not Good, Mycroft's Thoughts, Nude Photos, One Night Stands, One-Sided Attraction, POV Mycroft Holmes, Photographs, Poor Mycroft, Post-Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 17:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: Mycroft thinks about what was and what could have been between them upon hearing of Irene's death.





	Lonely Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dreamin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamin/gifts).



> **Dreamin** asked for this ship tonight and while I don't have many Adcroft prompts, this was one she had asked for this series that I thought I would tweak slightly.

Sherlock was almost sure that the first time his brother had met the impertinent Irene Adler had been during the entire situation with the royal and the racy photographs, but _he_ had known...well, he had rather hoped, at least...that the pictures would never have seen the light of day.

Theirs, his and Irene’s, certainly hadn’t, when she’d had all the opportunity before that to use them to bend to her will. And he might have, he could have let her have nearly anything to keep those Polaroid photographs secret, but she’d never shared them, and he’d never shared the single one she hadn’t taken after that night.

He had gone to a gentleman’s club very much unlike the Diogenes Club, which he had not been a member of or even considered for membership at at that point. She had been a slightly more common red woman, though still discrete. And she had been brought to the club by a member of the United States government who felt he should “loosen up and get laid.”

She had actually been very intent to listen to him. He had gotten into his cups more than usual, not feeling at all comfortable in the situation. These days he might consider himself demisexual, possibly. Or asexual with the occasional giving in to urges. He wasn’t sure if what he had felt towards her had been sexual attraction or not, but there had been an attraction of _some_ sort.

Eventually, they left, stumbling into a cab, and she took him to her flat. He had realized right away this was unusual for her; she was as drunk as he, and it wasn’t smart to take a client to your home. But she was not to be his, not really. One night, that was all they had shared until they had met again in his office when she was trying to get him to give up a lion’s share of her retirement fund.

Had she only asked, he would have given her the money out of his own accounts for one night. No sexual intercourse, no drinking, just an honest conversation in the privacy of some safe place for her: what had that night meant to her? Why had she not used the pictures as leverage? Why had she moved on to Sherlock? Would he never have been enough?

Why did she say what she said when he had said “You’re drunk,” the words that stuck in his mind all these years later.

_“Yes, I'm drunk. And you're beautiful. And tomorrow morning I'll be sober...but you'll still be beautiful.”_

Had she meant it?

He pulled the Polaroid out of the special place he kept it. Irene, nearly nude on the bed, asleep with nothing more than a pair of red lace knickers, her hair spread on the pillow.

If he hadn’t left with only that picture, would their lives have been different?

He supposed now, with news of her death in Karachi, he would never know.


End file.
